One year after winning second place in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, members of the small business Starpath visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of their prize opportunity to test their upgraded lunar regolith excavation and transportation rover in the center’s 20-foot thermal vacuum chamber. The technology startup headquartered in Hawthorne, California, won second place overall at the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024. This competition, one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, tasked competitors to design, build, and demonstrate robotic technologies that could excavate and transport the icy, rocky dirt – otherwise known as regolith – found on the Moon. As a future landing site for NASA’s Ading inspiration behind the development of the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, as NASA will require robust technologies that can excavate and transport lunar ice for extraction, purification, and use as drinking water or rocket fuel. Learn more about NASA Centennial Challenges at nasa.gov/winit. Show more